Team-Mate Wars: Abu Dhabi

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Saturday 7th November 2009

In Abu Dhabi, Sebastian Vettel scored a historic win. He beat team-mate Mark Webber 9-8 in the Team-Mate Wars table. Alonso and Buemi whitewashed their team-mates and Nico Rosberg ened up 16-1 with Nakajima.

Ferrari
Season: Raikkonen 5 Fisichella 0
Race: Raikkonen
Kimi Raikkonen has been helping mask the fact that Ferrari haven't been developing their car much in the latter half of the season. In Abu Dhabi it looked like he'd run out of escape routes. Half of this was probably down to the fact that due to heat issues, Ferrari were rumoured not to be using their KERS advantage. If you suddenly take 30kgs off the car with no experience where to stick the ballast then it's a big catch-up weekend.

Having said all that, Raikkonen only narrowly failed to get into Q3 on Saturday. Thus all the Ferrari bigwigs were at the race to witness a 12th and a 16th place finish, which is part of the malaise affecting F1. The Scuderia's success is so important to the vibrancy of the sport that seeing them do badly is in nobody's best interest. (We'll come on to this next week). Even then, thanks to extraordinary McLaren failures, Raikkonen wasn't that many seconds from the points needed to give them 3rd in the Constructors' championship.

BMW
Season: Heidfeld 10 Kubica 7
Race: Heidfeld
It would be good to see Kimi Raikkonen alongside Lewis Hamilton at McLaren, if only to work out Raikkonen's position relative to Alonso. Hamilton clearly has the speed on Alonso from 2007 if not the craft and experience. However, the one person who should really be in a McLaren seat next year is Nick Heidfeld. The Abu Dhabi grand prix showed - as did the 41 consecutive race finishes - what a safe (if small) pair of hands he is.

Kubica wasn't far enough up the grid for his fuel load and even though he made the most heroic of overtaking moves on Jarno Trulli on the opening lap, that was the limit of his progress. Heidfeld hung in there and got the Constructors' points that boosted BMW ahead of Williams and the team-mate points that indicate he really should be employed next season.

Renault
Season: Alonso 7 Grosjean 0
Race: Alonso
It's a mark of how little we think of Grosjean (I don't want to be too presumptive, but I think that's me and the rest of the people that watch F1, apart from Romain's mum and his manager) that when he gets close to Alonso we think it must be Fernando having a bad race not Romain having a good one. In practice he was his usual self, putting the car over all those nice blue and white painted lines that Aldar Construction had carefully painted on the run-off areas, exploring the grip on all the surfaces that weren't black etc. But his performance over seven races has only gone to prove that sacking Nelson Piquet was not the best option, based on results alone.

Over the course of the season Fernando Alonso has developed a range of resigned shrugs that he probably won't have to use next year.

Toyota
Season: Trulli 1 Kobayashi 1
Race: Kobayashi
Seasoned readers of this column may have noticed a tiny smidge, the faintest whiff of criticism levelled at Kamui Kamikaze last race. For this GP he was as good as gold, in fact astonishingly good. He beat Jarno Trulli on strategy, on the kind of day that Trulli will have been trying his very hardest. During the first stint of the race he set Personal Best after Personal Best as he found himself evelated to P3 on the road.

He didn't "do a Rubens" in the second stint either, continuing strongly to the line and scoring a well-deserved points finish. This rapid rate of improvement for a guy who's finished so poorly in GP2 was a joy to behold. The tragedy is that Toyota have withdrawn from the sport - like Honda - just when things were beginning to look interesting.

Williams
Season: Rosberg 16 Nakajima 1
Race: Rosberg
Nakajima's actually gone backwards against Rosberg this year. Last year it was 11-7. Rosberg started the Abu Dhabi GP in ninth and finished the race in ninth, never looking like a contender. That was Nakajima's trouble all year.

Brawn
Season: Barrichello 6 Button 11
Race: Button
Barrichello finished off the season beating Jenson in the qualifying stakes by 10-7. This was a triumph in itself for the old geezer. Having become Champ we thought that Jenson Button would relax and put in some stunning qualifying times to re-assert his position in front of Rubinho. It wasn't to be and yet again Rubens had the edge in grid position. For the second successive race Mark Webber was involved in some opening lap contact and Rubens was the innocent victim. Webbo's move from outside to inside typified some of his race starts this year. It wasn't a deliberate block, like he'd made at the Nurburgring and been punished for, but it was thoughtless and could have easily led to a first lap puncture. To hang your car out to the right of Vettel, then chop across to the inside was asking a lot of your fellow drivers, but he just about got away with it.

Jenson Button took advantage of Rubens' doubt about his front wing on the opening lap and then played the waiting game throughout the race. In the closing stages when he needed to get onto Mark Webber's gearbox he was mesmeric, but he lacked that killer instinct to get through. Something about those last lap moves said "let's not spoil everything" which doesn't bode well for next year.

Red Bull
Season: Webber 8 Vettel 9
Race: Vettel
Before we start: Sebastian, where's that double chin come from? It's not the off-season already... Vettel was brilliant in Abu Dhabi despite his Juan-Pablo appearance. Three races out of three is a fitting finale for Red Bull, who had the best car of 2009 and should really have taken both championships. Mark Webber couldn't live with Vettel's pace but exceeded all expectations in retaining second place against F1's Overtaker of the Year.

Toro Rosso
Season: Buemi 7 Alguersuari 0
Race: Buemi
Buemi got a point and Alguersuari didn't wreck his car, so all in all, a good weekend for Toro Rosso. Buemi's results have highlighted the corrosive mistake that Franz Tost made in sacking Sebastien Bourdais. Up until Bourdais' departure the two Sebastiens were evenly matched. After his departure Alguersuari never looked likely to beat his team-mate as was the case in Abu Dhabi. It may only be the difference between finishing last and second last in the championship, but that is worth at least $2m, not to mention all of Alguersuari's rebuilds.

In the race Jaime did what we all wanted a Red Bull car to do ever since they started sponsoring two teams and painting the cars alike. Yes, stop in the wrong garage for his pit-stop. The only pity was that Vettel wasn't directly behind him to complete the comedy sequence.

Force-India
Season: Sutil 2 Liuzzi 3
Race: Liuzzi
Despite some good practice times Adrian Sutil and Tonio Liuzzi fell of the pace on Saturday and were back to the positions we normally associate with the "plucky little tryers punching above their weight."

We had to listen to more of: "this team has Jordan DNA in it" crap from the BBC punditry team in Abu Dhabi. What do they mean by that? Certainly Eddie Jordan had his fair share of legal disputes during his time in charge and through the year we've heard of Force India having disputes over money allegedly owed to Aerolab, Ferrari and their motorhome provider - though happily for them they've just grabbed back $4.6m from Etihad Airways.

In Abu Dhabi we had to listen to more of: "this team has Jordan DNA in it" crap from the BBC punditry team. What exactly do they mean by that? Certainly Eddie Jordan had his fair share of legal bust-ups during his time in charge and through the year we've heard of Force India having disputes with Aerolab as well as their motorhome provider - though happily for them they've just grabbed back $4.6m from Etihad Airways.

McLaren
Season: Hamilton 13 Kovalainen 4
Race: Hamilton
Abu Dhabi was just too perfect for the McLaren mechanics. Give them air-conditioned garages, luxurious on-site accommodation and a blemish-free smooth circuit with more than ample run-off areas and what do you get? Two major mechanical glitches. Kovalainen should have been on the front row with Lewis but a gearbox failure ended his qualifying hopes. Lewis should have been dicing with Vettel till the end of the race but he might or might not have had front brakes after Lap 20, and though the run-off which goes under the grandstand at Turn 8 is a bit of a novelty, nobody wanted to see it tested out at 160mph.

Star of the Race
Button 5, Vettel 3, , Webber 2, Hamilton 1, Barrichello 1, Fisichella 1, Luizzi 1, Glock 1, Trulli 1, Kubica 1

Overtaking Move of the Race
Button 6, Webber 2, Hamilton 2, Glock 2, Rosberg 1, Piquet 1, Heidfeld 1, Barrichello 1, Kubica 1

Andrew Davies
Co-author with Adam Russ of 101 Sports not to Play (Portico Books). A book that rips it big time out of sports like Angling, Bog Snorkelling, Buzkashi, Potholing and Synchronised Swimming.

Your Comments

Onefishface

"Andrew has thrown some more rubbish out here, after every race he writes some things that just do not make sense. This time it's the Vettel/Webber and (as usual) Button/Barrichello competitions. Webber can not only match Vettel's speed, he has also at times exceeded it and made fewer mistakes this is even after starting the season with a broken leg!

Button was supreme in all the practice and qualifying sessions, beating Barrichello in all except Q3 where he had severe vibrations under braking and lost out to Rubens by a couple of tenths because of this. In the race I can't understand why Andrew says that he lacked 'killer instinct' because he was one of only a few drivers to even attempt moves on other cars, he only failed to get by Webber because he ran slightly too wide on his moves which allowed Mark 'Basher' Webber back through again. Andrew even contradicts himself when he said that Webber: "exceeded all expectations in retaining second place against F1's Overtaker of the Year." meaning he had to fight hard for his second place ahead of Button (who doesn't have killer instinct!!!) What rubbish."

dragon_2712

"Exactly Brandsy. You can't write a good piece on F1 if you have a bias against one of the drivers. Every single driver is there to race, and will defend their position strongly, so live with it. Webber's had a great season, considering he started with a broken leg, and the author clearly just doesn't rate him as a driver. If you want dangerous moves, have a look at Kobayashi moving twice to block Nakajima in Brazil - poor Kazuki could have been seriously hurt. "

jgregor

"@zoowho2 - Seriously now, we all know what the "F" in "F1" stands for, and it ain't Ferrari. Apparently you are the one thinking with their heart. This "Ferrari ARE the game" BS is the sort of thinking that led to all the special treatment they got from the FIA over the last ten years at least (special veto, more money, dodgy stewarding, the list could go on and on). The result? Proper racing fans left in their droves, sick of the bias and boring racing. Ferrari are just another team. Sorry about that. Like McLaren and Williams, they have a long and sometimes glorious history in the sport, and that should be freely recognised by all. But it should not be used as an excuse for special treatment. And the sooner this tiresome sense of entitlement, together with the arrogant, snooty attitude to other teams is lifted from them, the sooner they can get back to proper racing and sometimes winning, on their own merits, in an honourable and fair manner as befits their history. Unfortunately, with Todt now in power at the FIA, the chances of that happening are vanishingly small. That will continue to damage the entertainment and excitement of the sport, to everyone's - Ferrari included - detriment."